Les taches de thé et le garçon paria
by Mikutachi
Summary: A record of the downward spiral of one Draco Lucius Malfoy following the fall of the Dark Lord, and also of his amplifying obsession with his life-debt to the Boy Who Lived. Draco/Harry. WARNINGS: Self-injury, mature themes.
1. Il est mort

The tea-stains are getting bigger, deeper, darker, the symbol of his laziness, of his turmoil. He burns his tongue to cool it down with a mouthful of rainwater, the cup he keeps on the roof outside his window to catch whatever falls in.

The summer days he spends with his windows thrown wide open to hear the unwanted summer rain, watching the trees watch him, but not a human in sight.

He sometimes hears the voices echo over the grass, through the branches and leaves, through the undergrowth, calling him over to their side; leave whom you stand with. Come back to us.

The haunting laugh, the _He is dead._

Such a shiver had passed through him; he thought for a moment that he was back at home with a fever.

_What have I done_, he thought, _what have I done_. Because in his heart, he knows that this could have been avoided. He knows he's always been a coward, afraid of his father, afraid of the dark man who commands the world's will.

He's not sure whose side he ever was on, because he was always only in a position of fear, following the rule of the powerful, ever since he met him, the boy-who-lived, the golden boy, the one who would grow up to be called dead in front of a sobbing crowd. _Yes_, he thinks, _He was really the chosen one_.

It's not fondness the way he remembers Harry Potter, but it's not hate, either.


	2. Il rêve de Dieu

It smells of wind and wet grass when he falls asleep.

He dreams and a world of pain opens unto him, and when he awakens is when he thinks seriously about the God he heard so much about, the one that muggles exclaim to when so inclined. _Stupid_, he thinks, _how could_ _a God do such things when I can do such things? Turn milk into honey, water into wine._

_Maybe God was a wizard_, he thinks again, and falls back into painful sleep.

He wishes only for a dreamless slumber, long, dark, one that will last. He won't find it.

He just keeps trying to nurse old hurts by drowning them in endless cups of earl grey.


	3. Il souhaite à saigner

More often than not Draco awakens in a pool of his own perspiration, a humorless laugh echoing through his ears, the ghost of cold arms embracing him.

A not-so-distant memory. It's only two months, to the day.

Over the shoulder of the one the cold arms attached to, he remembered his mother watched him, his father looked apprehensive. And then, in the front, the giant held the body.

_The_ body.

What everyone thought was the end of the very end.

His bones still shake at the thought, starting in the marrow and shivering right up through his skin.

He didn't understand the ache in his fingertips when the Dark Lord turned and touched the dead boy's face, the fire in his feet. To cry out would have been betrayal, folly. He could not defeat the man who had just destroyed the one hope for survival, this dark man who had murdered Harry Potter.

And so he walked to his mother and clutched her hand like a sniveling boy and he cried out of anger, out of spite, out of longing, out of sheer want.

_No more fighting_, he thought, _no more_.

He wanted a cup of tea and sleep, and that's what he got.

The tea-leaves swirl in his cup, swirl him into a trance, and he sees the golden boy's face swim up from the depths.

_Potter_, he says quietly, but he does not spit the word with a shot of venom as he used to. It is not fondness that sweetens his tone, and he reminds himself often. _Make me bleed._

He wanted the hurt before, but now he doesn't think he can handle it.


	4. Il visite

_Fuck_, he says, and apparates, thinking, _let me go to where he is_.

He lands outside a normal sort of house, with windows and lattices and steps, so normal it could be a muggle house.

And then the golden boy happens to open the front door, unchanged, just out of a bath with wet hair.

Harry Potter freezes.

_What are you doing here_, he asks tentatively, and takes the stairs one by one.

The sniveling boy steels himself and blinks, but does not speak.

_Draco_, Potter says, moves closer.

_Fuck_, Draco says, and apparates.


	5. Il brûle

His conscience is almost as dark as the tattoo on his left arm, which happens to also be, now, his biggest regret.

All those times his then-enemy had ended up saving his skin, he has lost count.

He had forgotten about the Room of Requirement until now, how Potter could have let him slip, could have let him drop, could have let him die.

But he didn't.

How tightly he had clutched to the chosen one's waist as the heat of the flames licked their ankles and tasted their skin.

Draco's legs were raw and red for a week.

He takes his tea without honey and without cream nowadays, chuckling bitterly over the golden boy. Maybe he's the silver boy, it makes sense. Slytherin colors, second best. Then he chuckles more, because gold and silver aren't meant to be mixed.


	6. Il rêve

He says to him, his eyes seeping, dark in his skull, _You haunt me_.

The green eyes look on in silence, _At least I'm not mad_. The eyes look up at Draco now, and all he wants is to gouge them out, to unsee them, to stare into them until he finds the truth.

Whatever the truth is.

All of Draco's fantasies these days include the Mutilation of Harry Potter, when they aren't all feverish recollections of the times the boy-who-lived saved _him_ from mutilation.

Draco whispers, _I'm sorry_, and is met with a chuckle that dissipates into the night air, sour.

_Get over yourself_.

_I hate everything about you_, Draco replies. _Everything._

And then Draco awakens once more alone in his room, to the still unlikely sound of summer rain.


End file.
